Long Time, No Talk To!

Okay, so I've been MIA for over a month!

First, I was getting READY for the First Annual DFW ATCsForAll Sleepover...

Then, I was AT the Sleepover!

Then, I was RECOVERING from the Sleepover! LOL!

Sooooo, What did I accomplish? Nadalatta.

I was pretty bummed after I got home. I felt like I'd just taken up space...not really accomplished anything. Then I didn't want to Blog about it because I didn't want ANYONE (and you KNOW who you ARE! LOL!) to think it was THEIR fault or that I was blaming anyone but myself!

While chewing thru the whole process, I wondered why I was ragging on myself for not leading the pack and came to a few hard realizations:

1. Not even keeping up makes me feel OLD...
2. I felt like my creativity was about flatlined for the first half of the time I was there. Even after that, I was only going half-speed.
3. I was jealous of others ping-ponging from one project/technique to the next with gay abandon and cranking out art like nobody's business.
   

Whew! THAT was hard to say!

After stewing about it for another day I had a tiny, mollifying AHA moment...my Zoloft prescription, which handily keeps me from going all Rambo at work and thus losing my gainful employment, also "flattens" my creativity. Like most artists, my mood/creativity swings are a bit more extreme than the run-of-the-mill "normal" types. Up until I hit peri-menopause, I was able to deal with it and really did some amazing work on my up-cycles.

For the most part, that made it worth dealing with the down-cycles. Mostly. Until recently. Then I had to decide which was more important...paying rent or being a creative, vital, HOMELESS artist. It's no big surprise that I went with paying rent.

I really hadn't been creating that much in the last year, so I didn't notice the flattening that much. At the sleepover, I noticed. A lot.

So now I have to answer the question: Where do I draw that line? When do I decide that it's better to have my life a little less level and embrace that roller-coaster ride once again? I'm fortunate that my cycle is not so severe as to require the heavy duty meds, and I have friends who will sit on me if I start acting too loopy (which I never have done, well, yet anyway!).

It's something I have to think about.

Tales of the Obsolete...

My cheap, er, frugal nature has been battling my spendthrift nature (spendthrift usually wins) and we'll see how the battle of the Titans goes.

The cause of all this strife is my Klic-N-Kut cutter plotter. It entered my life last December and I've shown off what I can make with it, but I want to be able to take it with me for craft days. That, however, would require a laptop, which I didn't have (well, not really).

You see, I wasn't really counting the Toshiba Satellite my Dad gave me last Christmas. After all, it's a Pentium II with only 32 MB of memory and an "Enormous 4.1 Billion byte hard drive" (yes, that's 4 GB...I have thumbdrives with more capacity) It was a screamer when Dad bought it...in '99. And he kinda neglected to give me a power cord. Did I mention the battery is dead? Anyway, the real kicker is that KNK Studio, the software for my new toy, won't run on '98...gotta be XP at the minimum.

Soooooo, I set my sights on a 'real' laptop and saved up my money. But every time I found what I wanted, there was an unexpected expense that ate just enough of my funds that it was out of reach. Realizing that Murphy was playing with me (I'm Murphy's poster child...don't get behind me in line...ANYWHERE!), I reassessed my options.

In my stash of semi-obsolete computer bits and pieces I found an IBM laptop power source that worked with the old Toshiba. I got my Windows XP disk out and checked the laptop's resources. Rats, XP requires a minimum of 64MB of memory. A quick trip to TigerDirect.com actually turned up the correct laptop memory to max it out (160 MB, be still my heart) and it arrived today. I couldn't wait till 5:30 to hotfoot it home. Stopped off on the way to pick up a USB hub because this dino only has the one USB port and the KNK uses a USB to communicate as well as a USB dongle to unlock the software.

Install memory. Check.
Run XP pre-check. Check.
Result - Barely dooable. So I started the upgrade and crossed my fingers.
An hour later...we got's XP! Woot!

Couldn't wait to share progress so far (AND it's getting late!) so I'll let everyone know soonest if the poor old thing can run the KNK.

Life's been busy...

Can't believe it's been almost a month since I posted!

A lot happened at the evil necessity that must be endured (aka Work) that interfered with Art. Crossing fingers and hoping it settles down.

I'm learning several new drawing programs, several of which are free, the rest are free for older versions:

Project Dogwaffle is seriously cool. The top pay version has the neatest programmable brushes - you can actually load multiple images to use with it...the best use of this is in landscapes... the only drawback is that there are no layers, just good old traditional slap it on top of what's already there. We'll see if I plunk down the dineros for this one!

Art Weaver, from Germany, is one awesome piece of software, completely free. The interface is very Photoshop-ish, so I was able to jump in and create the following in my first session:

I have to go back and see if there is a donation 'button'...it's worthy of showing some appreciation!

The third application I'm looking at is Pixarra's TwistedBrush. Can't say anything about it yet...stay tuned!

All this started when somebody recommended Ambient Design's ArtRage to me in the WetCanvas! Digital forum. While I was able to quickly work up a piece that was acceptable, it's got more of a "kiddie" interface with stencils and virtual glitter. Art Weaver's interface is so much more sophisticated and flexible, that I really think it's going to be my core app.

More as it happens, or when Life stops interferring with Art! (whichever comes first!)

This Bites...

Well, my first international ATC trade has gone awry... drat, darn and poo!

The Aussie half of the trade came in straight away. Lovely cards by an artist who goes by 'ylfnogard'. (You can see some of her work here)

Mine was mailed on 1/16 and she's still not gotten it. I'm giving it a few more days and then I'm sending another package.

Ylfnogard likes to trade 'rolos,' which are, essentially, decorated Rolodex cards. I was also trading with her Tweener daughter, Angellips. This is the card I made for her...

*SIGH*

ATC Crazy

Over the holidays I discovered a great site for trading ATCs (Artist Trading Cards). I'd read about ATCs for several years but whenever I searched for more info it emphasized trading in person...and I couldn't find anything locally. The few sites with International swaps...welllll, I just didn't like the 'art' that was being swapped. To be honest, most of it was cr@p!
http://www.artist-trading-cards.ch/index.html

I think running into Cedarseed's site really fired me up to get started, though. So when I found www.ATCards.com (note, that site is defunct and has been replaced with an improved site: ATCsforall.com), I jumped in with both feet. I had a backlog of images I'd created with Photoshop, so I mined those to get started.
I was surprised at which cards got the most attention. I was surprised, also, at a distinct bias against digital works, like it's cheating or something. Looking at some of the 'handmade' stuff on offer, I'll stick with my digital!

That said, there are plenty of members who are into digital or just open to trade for digital, so I'm not constrained by someone else's shortsightedness. Now that I've been participating for a few weeks, I'm signing up for a few swaps...

What I like most about the whole enchilada is that I'm doing a lot more work right now than I was before.

And art is just like photography. You have to do it a lot to get good at it.